Tag Archives: facebook

PREACHER ASKS CHURCH OFFICIALS TO DELETE FACEBOOK ACCOUNTS

A New Jersey preacher has told his 1,100 member flock that using Facebook is a sin, and has asked 50 married officials of his church to delete their accounts or resign. Reverend Cedric Miller thinks that 20 married couples in his Living Word Christian Fellowship Church are a representative sample, leading him to conclude that Facebook leads to adultery. The pairs all had problems after exes found one of the spouses on the social network. The reverend had previously asked married couples in his congregation to share their login information with spouses. Now he wants them to just stop using Facebook.

… The reverend’s going to get rid of his own Facebook account so he can set a good example for his congregation.

Facebook… THE FACTS.

In anticipation of the movie, The Social Network, which hits theaters tomorrow (Friday), we thought we’d throw out some random facts about everyone’s favorite social networking site: Facebook.

_ The average Facebook user has 130 friends and is connected to 60 pages, groups and events. He is most likely to be married and white. Facebook users tend to be older than users of other networking sites, thus, being late adopters. This group is extremely loyal — 75 percent claim that Facebook is their favorite site.

_ More than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) are shared each month. More than three billion photos are uploaded. The average user only clicks the Like button on content nine times a month. They comment 25 times.

_ There are 500 million active users on Facebook. Half of these log onto the site in any given day. More than 35 million users update their status everyday.

_ There are more than 100 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices. People that access Facebook via mobile are twice as active than non-mobile users.

_ People spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook. The average user stays on the site 55 minutes daily.

_ The United States remains the top country on Facebook.

_ Facebook’s popularity has led psychologists in the US to identify a new mental health condition they call Facebook Addiction Disorder.

_ In 2006, Yahoo offered to buy Facebook for $1 billion, which Mark Zuckerberg turned down. In 2009, the site was valued at $4 billion. Today, Facebook is estimated to be worth between $7.9 to $11 billion.

FACEBOOK HITS 500 MILLIONTH MEMBER

Facebook announced Wednesday morning it has reached its 500 millionth member.

… Facebook has amassed 100 million new members since February alone.

… Facebook users have uploaded 50 billion photos (and tagged 15 billion of them).

… Einstein, Twain, Wilde, Gandhi and Shakespeare are among the most quoted people on profiles.

… Nearly 20% of users list themselves as single, about 16% as married.

… Members create 400,000 events each day.

… The most popular books listed in Facebook profiles are Harry Potter and The Bible.

… About 70% of Facebook’s users now live outside of the United States, with the Middle East, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, India and Brazil becoming some of the fastest growing regions.

… Facebook remains the largest in the social network universe, alongside quickly growing but still smaller networks such as Twitter and professional networking site LinkedIn, which have about 105 million and 70 million users, respectively.

THINGS TO STOP DOING ON FACEBOOK NOW

Social networking sites are great for sharing photos and information, but unfortunately, they are just as great for getting that personal information into the wrong hands.

Using a weak password
Avoid simple names or words you can find in a dictionary, even with numbers tacked on the end. Instead, mix upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and symbols. A password should have at least eight characters. One good technique is to insert numbers or symbols in the middle of a word, such as this variant on the word “houses”: hO27usEs!

Leaving your full birth date in your profile
It’s an ideal target for identity thieves, who could use it to obtain more information about you and potentially gain access to your bank or credit card account. If you’ve already entered a birth date, go to your profile page and click on the Info tab, then on Edit Information. Under the Basic Information section, choose to show only the month and day or no birthday at all.

Overlooking useful privacy controls
For almost everything in your Facebook profile, you can limit access to only your friends, friends of friends, or yourself. Consider leaving out contact info, such as phone number and address, since you probably don’t want anyone to have access to that information anyway.

Posting your child’s name in a caption
Don’t use a child’s name in photo tags or captions. If someone else does, delete it by clicking on Remove Tag. If your child isn’t on Facebook and someone includes his or her name in a caption, ask that person to remove the name.

Mentioning that you’ll be away from home
That’s like putting a “no one’s home” sign on your door. Wait until you get home to tell everyone how awesome your vacation was and be vague about the date of any trip.

Letting search engines find you
To help prevent strangers from accessing your page, go to the Search section of Facebook’s privacy controls and select Only Friends for Facebook search results. Be sure the box for public search results isn’t checked.

Permitting youngsters to use Facebook unsupervised
Facebook limits its members to ages 13 and over, but children younger than that do use it. If you have a young child or teenager on Facebook, the best way to provide oversight is to become one of their online friends. Use your e-mail address as the contact for their account so that you receive their notifications and monitor their activities.

From another source they have their own don’t do’s: Things Not to Do on Facebook…

6 Degrees to Kevin Bacon has been beat!

A study of social media analyzed over 5.2 billion connections on Twitter and determined that there are actually just five connections separating you from most everyone else (possibly including Kevin Bacon). On average, Twitter users have five degrees of separation between each other — meaning nearly everyone within Twitter is only five steps away. Of all friendship distances, five steps is the most common (41%), while a friendship distance of four steps is the second-most common (37%).

FarmVille is taking us over

Pat James’ wife Tracy confessed this morning…she’s a FarmVille addict!

By Jon Swartz, USA TODAY
Life on FarmVille has had a transformative effect on Laura Phillips.

For 45 minutes a day, Phillips, a 41-year-old marketing contractor in the Silicon Valley town of Morgan Hill, Calif., gets lost in the digital game on Facebook, managing crops and animals on her virtual farm.

“This is my escape from city life; it’s my relaxation,” she says. “Since Day One, I’ve been a complete addict. I lose sleep at night, worrying about my farm.”

Phillips is one of more than 56 million monthly users of the game created by Zynga, a company that specializes in social games for platforms including Facebook, MySpace, iPhone and Bebo. FarmVille had just 354 users on June 20, the day after it launched. It’s widely believed to be the largest and fastest-growing social game ever.

FarmVille’s addictive qualities tend to sneak up on the casual interloper. Then again, so has its entire genre: Games are the killer app on social networks. Tens of millions of consumers are opting to play simple, quick games on Facebook, MySpace and elsewhere – often via their mobile devices. An estimated 100 million people are recent devotees of social games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, Sorority Life and Bejeweled.

The gamers, many of whom eschewed traditional video-game consoles, have spurred revenue for Facebook. The 5-year-old social-networking site recently announced it was operating in the black – a major feat in an industry beset by doubts about its ability to be profitable.

Are you addicted to FarmVille or other games? Become our friends on Facebook HERE.

Well get a load of the new Facebook game.

The point of the game is that people post a picture of themselves lying somewhere.

So that means in the middle of the road, bars, trees and so on. Where will you lie down?

Click the gallery for some fun examples to help you get your GAME ON!!!

It’s Over…Why I’ve Been Boycotting Facebook

For at least a few months – since everyone I know has joined Facebook including my mom – I have been boycotting it !

Here are the top reasons I was boycotting:

1. I know myself well enough to know I would get addicted.
2. I would still like to be a mom and a wife.
3. Everyone else is doing it.
4. I don’t think everyone needs to know that I just went potty.
5. It’s not that hard to connect with me now.
6. I sometimes make things difficult and overthink which explains #7.
7. I worry about what social networking will do to our kids.

OK, so after lots of thought I decided that I can’t avoid Facebook any longer. First, I am a social person. And this job kind of requires that. I finally decided to get on the bandwagon after I thought…

We often hear from you the listener that you feel like you know us – that we are friends – but we don’t know you. I want to know you – all 200,000 of you! And I figure this is the best way to do it.

So friend me on Facebook…and I will do my best to stay in touch. You just have to promise to organize an intervention when my daughter starts calling someone else mommy ; )

You can also be a FAN here – this is where I will post all kinds of updates from our show including contest info.

Social Media Is Like Recess

You KNOW Social Media is everywhere when your father or grandfather are Facebooking! Or better yet, twittering!!!

I have to admit, I’m really big on social media. And if you think to yourself, what the heck IS social media anyway? Trust me, if you’re on a computer, whether at home or work, you’re probably doing it and don’t even know it. Well I came upon such a well written piece comparing Social Media to Recess, I just had to blog it! It’s Written by Steve Cunningham, the CEO of a digital marketing agency, Polar Unlimited. He gladly gave up being a lawyer, and is obviously a talented writer! I loved this! Hope you do too!

“Social Media Is Like Recess”

Yes, it’s an odd analogy…but bear with me here. I believe that (unless you were a grade school dropout) you already know all you need to know to be successful with social media. Why’s that? In a nutshell: times may have changed but people fundamentally haven’t. The structures and interactions of a grade school recess are astonishingly similar to those of most social media communities.

The same people that show up in your Twitter stream and your Facebook feed are the very same characters you caught eating glue in kindergarten. Here are only 3 of the ways I believe that social media is like recess:

#1: The big group is made up of lots of small groups. There is no single Twitter community: it’s a collection of tens of thousands of small networks of ‘followers’ that share some commonality. There is no single Facebook or LinkedIn community: just thousands of networks of friends and affinities hubbed around an individual. These networks (or circles of friends standing around on asphalt) are made and stay together by shared interests, where each member of the group has actively made a decision to participate. And this is the interesting part:.you can’t join a group by just standing on the sidelines. You have to get in the game.
Lesson: Find your place in a smaller group. Some people play football, some play with dolls. Recess is too short for both.

#2: Every group’s got a leader. Every teacher knows how to quickly identity the ‘troublemaker’ in every group. At recess, these troublemakers usually decided what sport they would play or who the topic of the latest gossip would be. When they grow up, these kids will be re-branded “passionate” and “motivated”, but until then, they’ll be visiting the principal’s office frequently. Similarly, most successful social media operations reflect the personality and interests of one individual: Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, Leo LaPorte, Mike Arrington, Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis, etc. These e-celebs have fostered their networks (and generated gigabytes of monthly traffic) by identifying and holding true to the field in which they love. They also share one other trait: they aren’t afraid to stir the pot every once in a while.
Lesson: If you want to take a leadership position in that smaller group, you need to be willing to stir the pot every once in while, even if it lands you in the principal’s office.

#3: Your actions have consequences. Whether it’s on the playground or on Twitter, everyone loves to watch a good meltdown, right? There’s a not-so-secret thrill in seeing other people publicly self-destruct. (Evidence here). The difference is that online, those meltdowns stay in the public domain forever. Your friends might have forgotten that time you cried when your 6th grade girlfriend dumped you for the older, more sophisticated 7th grader, but the Internet never forgets. Worth remembering the next time you want to fire off a zinger reply to some snotty comment troll.
Lesson: What happens at recess, does not stay at recess. Remember that.
My point? You’ve seen this all before: on the playground, in your home and at the office. Success in those arenas, as well as social media, comes down to how well you relate to people. You’d be much better off reading Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (written in 1937) than any of the “Secrets of Social Media Success” crap.

Man, I loved recess.

Loved that! btw, you can Facebook me (judi diamond), or follow me on twitter, or visit my vlog (www.lipsticknlaundry.com)! I will add you back!